Don’t Fall For This Former Russian Diplomat Defaming His Profession

Only he can account for his motivations, but it can’t be denied that his claim about all of his country’s diplomats striving to prove their personal loyalty to President Putin through their supposed “propaganda” is preposterous and can’t be taken seriously, nor can his description of Russia’s partners across the world as irrelevant fringe elements.

Former Russian diplomat and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Alexander Baunov, whose Moscow branch was closed down earlier this year for violating local laws, published a piece at the Financial Times defaming his profession. Titled “Russia’s diplomats are now reduced to propagandists”, this former state representative who served in his country’s Embassy in Greece for just several years around the turn of the century according to open sources claims that his former peers’ fierce rhetoric since February isn’t just directed more towards the domestic audience than the foreign one, but specifically towards President Putin to prove their personal loyalty to him.

Baunov implies that his compatriots pay close attention to their diplomats’ comments, but that’s very unlikely to be the case, just like in most countries anywhere across the world. Furthermore, his claim also presupposes that the Russian leader is aware of every public statement made by his foreign representatives, as if he doesn’t have anything better to do and is directly invested in micromanaging each of their careers by rewarding or punishing them on the basis of whatever they tell the world. About that, Baunov believes that his homeland is isolated and only supported by irrelevant fringe elements outside of Russia, but Bloomberg just confirmed that half the G20 has refused to sanction Russia.

It also deserves mentioning that this former diplomat’s perspective is outdated and disproportionately influenced by his time serving in the Russian Embassy in Greece. For instance, when he wrote that “This change is far from easy for diplomats, who are used to thinking of themselves as the sophisticated crème de la crème of public service”, he’s almost certainly talking about his own personal opinion in the niche role that he possibly played by brainstorming benign policies in a comparatively unimportant posting abroad. For whatever his reason was, he decided not to continue serving as a diplomat after only several years, which suggests that he might even have an axe to grind.

That could explain why he decided to defame his former profession on such a high-profile foreign media outlet like the Financial Times. He hadn’t served in his position for a very long time, and even then, his role in the larger scheme of things was extremely miniscule. Baunov’s words therefore can’t be taken for granted as the so-called “insider” that his writer’s description implies that he upon informing readers of his professional past but should be interpreted as those of a pro-Western dissident who’s employed by an American think tank whose operations were just ordered to close in Moscow earlier this year. By mentioning his former service so many years ago, he likely intends to mislead folks.

That’s because the casual information consumer is largely influenced by such professional descriptions, which trigger them into imagining that the person whose views they’re being exposed to is truly “the sophisticated crème de la crème” as Baunov arrogantly described himself as previously being. The point behind his article isn’t to inform his audience about his experiences otherwise he’d have mentioned that they occurred many years ago in a niche context, which thus makes them outdated and irrelevant to making generalizations like the defamatory one that he just did, but to give them the false impression that all Russian diplomats are sycophantic propagandists whom President Putin personally follows.

Having been removed from the diplomatic profession for so many years, it was predictable that Baunov wouldn’t have any idea about the latest treatise shared earlier in the month by Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department Alexey Drobinin, the spirit of which certainly circulated throughout the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the past nearly six months. He comprehensively explained Russia’s role in the global systemic transition to multipolarity and also elaborated on why its diplomats have abandoned the Occidentalist sympathies that many of them previously expressed in response to the US-led West actively seeking to militarily contain and subsequently dismantle their civilization-state.

Back to Baunov after debunking the defamatory claims that he spewed against his former colleagues, this one-time diplomat also availed himself of the opportunity to propagate the similarly false claim that Russia is isolated and only supported by irrelevant fringe elements across the world. In reality, the overwhelmingly vast majority of the international community has refused to sanction Russia, Foreign Minister Lavrov just completed a very successful tour of Africa, and even EU foreign policy chief Borrell just complained about how jealous he was of the global media attention that his Russian counterpart generated during that trip.

The reason why Russia is so enthusiastically embraced by the Global South is because its states and people sincerely endorse President Putin’s global revolutionary manifesto that Foreign Minister Lavrov elaborated upon in the African context to promise that his country will help its partners there fully complete their decolonization processes. In practice, this has taken the form of the creative “Democratic Security” assistance that the Kremlin has provided to the Central African Republic (CAR) and most recently Mali for counteracting Hybrid War threats. It should also be said that the new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”) that Russia aspires to jointly assemble with India is attractive to many too.

Altogether, there’s no doubt that Baunov exploited the global attention given to his attacks through their publication by the Financial Times and that outlet’s reference to his former profession to manipulate his audience’s perceptions about Russian diplomats. Only he can account for his motivations, but it can’t be denied that his claim about them all striving to prove their personal loyalty to President Putin through their supposed “propaganda” is preposterous and can’t be taken seriously, nor can his description of Russia’s partners across the world as irrelevant fringe elements, or as he put it, “passive spectators” and “diehard fans”. He clearly has an axe to grind against his country, and it shows.